Archive for February, 2005
- Finding planets :: * The “headmap sphaeric”:http://www.headmap.org/unlearn/sphaeric/findplanet.htm web page has a simple geometrical method for finding rough positions of the planets based on using concentric circles to represent the orbit of the planet and of the earth. I’ll re-work this a little minus the ideology. *Note added 27th Feb* : errors prove large for Mars. The smaller signal is the [...] :: Wednesday, February 23rd, 2005 :: Posted in Maths | Comments Off
- Cumulative frequency curves from the TTA :: * “Cumulative frequency curve”:http://www.tta.gov.uk/php/read.php?sectionid=128&articleid=271 summary from the Teacher Training Agency! * The TTA material covers the syllabus for the Numeracy test that newly qualified teachers must take * The material is presented as Web pages that are also available in a plain form for printing out * “Areas of numeracy covered”:http://www.tta.gov.uk/php/read.php?sectionid=128&articleid=266 * There are “interactive practice tests”:http://www.tta.gov.uk/php/read.php?sectionid=129&articleid=194 available as [...] :: Wednesday, February 23rd, 2005 :: Posted in Maths | Comments Off
- Genetic fingerprinting – probability of false match? :: The “Centre for Innovation in Mathematics Teaching”:http://www.ex.ac.uk/cimt/resource.htm has a range of simple Web pages that set up a problem in a context using GCSE level Maths. * “Chance of false matches in DNA matching”:http://www.cimt.plymouth.ac.uk/resources/res1/fgrprnts.htm (genetic fingerprinting) is a useful leader for a lesson on combined probabilities – and directly useful to Forensic science students! * “Mistaken DNA [...] :: Wednesday, February 23rd, 2005 :: Posted in Maths | Comments Off
- MyMind mind mapper :: Sebastian Krauss provides “MyMind 1.2″:http://www.sebastian-krauss.de/software/ a small free outliner and mind mapping tool for the Mac OS X platform. Very simple and basic which actually makes it more useful than the all singing mind mappers around. MyMind can export its map views as Web pages with a client side image map coded in. Site maps like [...] :: Monday, February 21st, 2005 :: Posted in Web | Comments Off
- Dissertation without tears :: “The formula for writing Essays is rather loose. It was invented by Michel Montaign in the sixteenth century. It was a variation on the sermon. A sermon is traditionally appended to an opening biblical text which it refers, or at least alludes to, the holiday when the sermon was delivered. It is a fantasy or [...] :: Sunday, February 20th, 2005 :: Posted in Notes | Comments Off
- Maths for adults :: The diagram above is re-drawn from Mike Ollerton’s book Getting the buggers to add up published by Continuum. Most of the issues he raises for engaging children and teenagers are *alive and well for adults*… * Take away aspects of ‘behaviour’ – less challenging anyway * Add in a big set of built in hangups and partial [...] :: Sunday, February 20th, 2005 :: Posted in Maths | Comments Off
- Short headings and summaries :: Gerry McGovern suggests (see “Secrets of great Web headings”:http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2004/nt_2004_11_01_web_writing.htm ) * *Headings and titles less than 8 words*, nearer 4 * *Summaries less than 30 words* * Online research indicates most summaries coming in at 17 words with a low of 10 and a high of 25 Idea for lesson activity: take typical Intranet news item text and write [...] :: Sunday, February 20th, 2005 :: Posted in Web | Comments Off
- 216 colour cube :: “The Netscape palette for foreground colors usually (but NOT always) consists of all the combinations of 00, 33, 66, 99, CC, FF for each of the red, green, and blue elements of the color descriptor. This results in 216 (6×6x6) distinct colors.” – Victor Engel * “The Browser Safe Palette (BSP)”:http://the-light.com/netcol.html * “Colour palette map (hover to [...] :: Saturday, February 19th, 2005 :: Posted in Web | Comments Off
- Open quals :: “http://www.openquals.org.uk/”:http://www.openquals.org.uk/ :: Friday, February 18th, 2005 :: Posted in Notes | Comments Off
- Some stats simulations :: * “Central Limit Theorem”:http://www.stat.sc.edu/~west/javahtml/CLT.html – you can roll up to 5 dice up to 10000 times and plot the frequency distribution of the total score. As you ‘roll the dice’ a second and third time, the _cumulative_ score is shown so that the Normal distribution can emerge through repeated samples. Nice touch – imagine using [...] :: Sunday, February 13th, 2005 :: Posted in Maths | Comments Off
- What is good hypertext writing? :: Jutta Degener’s “What is good hypertext writing”:http://kbs.cs.tu-berlin.de/~jutta/ht/writing.html essay is still relevant 7 years later, even though Web pages tend to look *more like interfaces* and less like documents. The rest of her homepage looks sort of antique but still interesting. I like the paintings. :: Saturday, February 12th, 2005 :: Posted in Web | Comments Off
- Transquoting :: ” *It never occurred to me that the techies writing the software would try to use the computer to simulate paper Ôø? actually not even paper, but paper under glass.* ” “quoted in Grand Text Auto blog”:http://grandtextauto.gatech.edu/2004/07/17/trace-incubation-conference-trip-report/#more-385 Ted Nelson suffered character assasination in a well known Wired article about Xanadu. Anyone who can dismiss Word / [...] :: Thursday, February 10th, 2005 :: Posted in Web | Comments Off
- Central Limit Theorem :: ” **The distribution of an average tends to be Normal, even when the distribution from which the average is computed is decidedly non-Normal** “. “Thus, the Central Limit theorem is the foundation for many statistical procedures, including Quality Control Charts, because the distribution of the phenomenon under study does not have to be [...] :: Sunday, February 6th, 2005 :: Posted in Maths | Comments Off